Life Changing Success Lessons to Learn from Kevin o Leary as a Budding Entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur is one thing, but having a great personality is totally another. He is animated and energetic, he is shrewd and interactive, he is a TV personality who is best known for his blunt criticism. He helps startups on ABC’s Shark Tank grow their business from zero to a hundred, at a trail-blazing speed.

He is none other than the amazing Kevin O’Leary.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as one of the two sons of the Georgette family, Kevin had the flames of entrepreneurship burning in his blood from the beginning. Back in 1979, while completing his MBA program, O’Leary got selected for an internship at Nabisco in downtown Toronto and eventually worked his way up the ladder to become an assistant brand manager for Nabisco’s cat food brand. Later on, he founded the Softkey Software Products, a technology firm that sold both educated and entertained families with the help of software. The company was later on acquired by Mattel in the year 1999 and made Kevin O’Leary $3.65 Billion.

He has authored three bestselling titles about his life journey, entrepreneurship and how to make money.

Here are some important life lessons which you can learn from Kevin O’Leary as a budding entrepreneur.

Money is the Lifeblood of Your Business

You may come across many individuals who will tell you that everything is not about money. People will tell you the pursuit of business is stability and helping others. However, Kevin O’Leary completely disagrees with this statement. According to him, money is the lifeline of your business.

Imagine you are playing chess without any pawns; do you understand how volatile your royalty is now? Kevin believes that money is your pawns on the chess board. Just like you sacrifice pawns on a chessboard to win the game, you sacrifice finances to score better business and win your game.

At one occasion, he explains

“Here’s how I think of my money – as soldiers – I send them out to war every day. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there’s more of them. If some of them die, that’s bad. If they all die, that means you’re broke”

Entrepreneurship is All About Freedom

In one of his accounts, Kevin tells us about an interesting experience he had when he was a teenager. At that time, he used to work at an ice-cream store in a local mall. One day, he was asked by the management to scrub off some gum from the floor and instead, he said no. He got fired from the job.

He, later on, realized this important fact that being an employee is slavery and being an entrepreneur is freedom. From that day onward, Kevin O’Leary decided that he just won’t settle for a minimum wage job.

He will build an empire of his own.

Don’t Romance Up with Flawed Ideas

Do you know that the greatest enemy of your finances is bad ideas! Entrepreneurs who often find themselves in a fix where they are not sure which idea they are chasing after, often run the finances down the drain. Bad ideas kill companies and sooner you realize it, the better it is for you and your future.

On Shark Tank, you often find incredibly passionate entrepreneurs coming up with their remarkably designed products and idea pitches. However, they don’t realize that they are infatuated with terrible ideas that may have a short-term life but won’t last long. In short, they lack a powerful business model backing them up.

Some believe that Kevin is quite blunt when it comes to investment, but what they fail to observe is that he is also very logical. Believe it or not, but he is quick to give a dose of reality to individuals.

He says:

“I have met many entrepreneurs who have the passion and even the work ethic to succeed – but who are so obsessed with an idea that they don’t see its obvious flaws. Think about that. If you can’t even acknowledge your failures, how can you cut the rope and move on?”

Having Passion is Not the End-Goal

Do you know that Kevin O’Leary has a current net worth of $400 million? He wasn’t born with a golden spoon in his mouth. Kevin started off his career journey as a fashion photographer, but he was soon facing reality when his father told him that:

“Photography is not good enough to earn a living.”

He soon realized that the kind of money he aspired to make would require him to explore his options by going out of the box. He understood that with photography, he isn’t going to get far. If he chased his passion and his dream, he would end up as a starving artist wondering why his snaps aren’t getting sold. So, he took the brave decision and left his long-lasting dream behind. He started off pursuing a new one, to build his own big business dream.

Kevin O’Leary taught everyone that following your passion blindly will not help you move towards success. You have to give up on your dreams sometimes and make new ones which will contribute to your success.

You Can’t Buy Success for Cheap

If you are willing to get successful in life, you will have to move out of your comfort zone. You need to learn how to make sacrifices and these can also include your personal life, your family and maybe more.

Kevin is fueled with a different mindset. He believes in a completely different theory. To Kevin, there is no such thing as a work-life balance. There is no such thing as a balance when it comes to success. Kevin believes that you should give every ounce of who you are if you want to earn great successes in life.

When work ethics are set to working hard & going through a lot of sacrifices, it is that thin line which separates you from becoming who fails and who succeeds permanently.

In a Nutshell

“Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we’re going to win.” – Kevin O’Leary

This opening statement is enough to explain how Kevin perceives the corporate world. For him, the corporate sector is a battlefield and killing competitors is his ultimate desire. To him, it is all a blood-bath and he wants to win the war by reaching the top. He wants everyone to fear him and wants everyone on his team to know that they are going to win. Kevin is a unique personality and if you are inspired by his attitude, do let us know what you feel about him and how you can motivate yourself to be the best.